Cut Above
by Dulcet Darling
Summary: A look at a romance between Sirius and Remus, rated M for triggers and written heavily from the isolated perspective of a Remus Lupin struggling with depression. It explores some very dark places intimately and love ultimately prevails. Please give it a shot and, if you do, review—particularly if you're able to relate. (I apologize to those who want smut: there is none here.)


**About the CONTENT: **Triggers ahead and other such bullshit. But first a more important warning: Do not romanticize mental illness, do not romanticize self harm. It's not charming, it's not sexy, and hurt/comfort is not my favourite plot device. That said, I did write this (I have no idea why, I don't even like ANGST, either) and I hope that I managed to treat the subject matter in a respectful manner as it is far from unfamiliar to me. Wherever I failed, pardon me. (And it would be pretty cool if you read some of my usual stuff before judging me too harshly.)

**About the TRIGGERS:** The triggers themselves include self harm, physical abuse, and suicidal thoughts.

**About the STYLE:** There is _very_ little dialogue here (although dialogue is certainly my strong point) because it is meant to be detached. Those who enjoy conversations and explicit character interaction might choose to pass on this particular fiction—it's intended to be read from the isolated perspective of someone struggling with depression.

**About the FACTS:** You should know that I haven't read any of the Pottermore BS on Remus, so I have no idea about his actual childhood. And I give no fucks about it for the sake of this story.

**And finally, about the OWNERSHIP:** These characters are all very obviously JKR's. The only things that are mine are the words and the feelings.

**o o o**

Remus groaned. His arms ached and he felt hollow. He had become accustomed to spending long nights awake—after all, sleeplessness rather came with the emotional territory—but it did not make them easier. Having exhausted his only means of alleviating what he could of his distress, Remus was empty and bleeding. Well, he bled slowly now. It had stopped for the most part. There was a kind of calm that came with... self harm (he hesitated to label it.) It did not make him feel better, but it made him feel in control—which came as a welcome change from his wild behaviour as a wolf and the complete inability to rein in his own emotions. When his autonomy began to slip away, the choice of whether or not to commit the act allowed him to cling to a vestige of self-governance. He typically chose to go ahead with it.

The idea of opening his own skin was unappealing but the act was cathartic for Remus. It wasn't for any love of pain that he did it (a masochist Remus Lupin was not); he only reveled in the comparative peace that washed over him in its wake. He could then calmly contemplate the tragedy of his life without sinking further and further into a hopeless downward spiral. He plateaued. It did not bring him to a better place, but at least it prevented him from sinking to a worse one—and there was always something worse around the corner. He had known that for years.

This whole thing—the mutilation thing—had started with the wolf. Not an unintelligent young man (and a man he was, at 17), Remus knew that his mental capacity was much different when he was a wolf. Simplified. A bit like being drunk, it removed his inhibitions and allowed him to act instinctually on what he felt. Except that, unlike being drunk, he had no hope of sobering himself and regaining even a shred of his former intelligence until the thing had ridden itself out. During a particularly low episode that had coincided unfortunately with the full moon, Remus had been out in the Shrieking Shack preparing for the transformation, when his friends would complete transformations of their own and come to spirit him away. He had felt his body morph and his mind alter and, instead of erupting into a violent mess as he usually did (the howling and growling were the signs that usually alerted the other Marauders to approach), Remus had shrunk. He had simply sat on the wooden floor of the shack with his hands over his ears, keening low in his throat. His wolf brain had never before had to deal with the crushing weight of such mind-numbing human emotion. He had lashed out.

The instincts of the wolf were geared for only two things: fight or flight. Unable to run from the formless weight of his own feelings, Remus the werewolf had felt it prudent to fight. If he couldn't escape the only physical evidence of the enemy—himself—he could at least hurt it. His good friends had entered the shack to find him much bloodied and breathing heavily, but reasonably sedate. They assumed it had been a rough transformation and, at the end of the night, expressed their condolences accordingly. Remus had nodded with no real feeling and gone to bed strangely calm about the ordeal.

It took a while to carry over to human behaviour.

He found it was imprudent to continue to wait for the full moon for temperance. It was beginning to disturb his friends, and James was loudly suggesting that Remus should speak to the nurse or—still worse—to Dumbledore. And that would not do. Their headmaster was too intuitive and too perceptive and Remus wasn't going to go through the rigmarole of dealing with St. Mungo's again. The hospital prescribed cheering charms unfailingly, and while it was true that he would feel a sense of (overdone) happiness and contentment for a time, the feeling was shallow and accompanied by an underlying discomfort. When the charm wore off, it felt to Remus as though a torrent of stored up emotion came rushing down on him. More likely, his own dread and the guilt at cheating himself out of deserved unhappiness via magic were what lead to it. Regardless, in order to evade the crippling lows that followed them, he now refused to employ cheering charms at all.

So, to avoid arousing the suspicions of his friends or attracting the attention of the too-discerning Albus Dumbledore, Remus had taken a blade to his human skin for the first time. Across the widest part of his forearm a red line had appeared and he winced to look at it—it was crude and a little nauseating. It would be easy to hide, being somewhere above his wrist and below his elbow, covered as it would be by his robes and the long shirts he usually wore anyway. Even if it were to be glimpsed, it could probably quite easily pass for another wound attained in dealing with his "furry little problem." That night he had made only one laceration—uncomfortable with the appearance and the idea—but Remus would find it got easier with time. Soon both forearms would be littered with scars, though he would always favour his left.

And now... Now he was lying in bed, wasted and hollow, evaluating the emotional wreck that was Remus J. Lupin. He had known he wasn't right for some time. There were no incidences of mental illness anywhere in his family tree, but who knew every effect that a werewolf bite could possibly have? It was easiest to blame everything on the wolf: the problem and the solution. Something had upset his brain chemistry. Something had sent him spiraling. As a child it had just felt like a kind of exhausting melancholy, ill-placed and fixable. A hug from his mother, a game with his friends. It had been that easy to forget his troubles. The older he got, the less the distractions had helped and the more they began to chafe at his emotional discomfort. He could not participate and he did not know why. It confused him—saddened him further. And so Remus had withdrawn and become known as something of a loner, more content with his own company than others'.

His arrival at Hogwarts had made him different. He had come off a particularly hard fall just before his first ride on the Hogwarts Express and something about the school had made Remus feel as though everything were looking up. For once, things were improving instead of growing steadily worse. When he met the group of boys who would become his best friends, that feeling only increased. For nearly a year, Remus had been the happiest he had felt in a long time. It had slowly come upon him that he would not always be so content; like coming down off a cheering charm, his next low felt all the lower for the happiness that had preceded it. He chuckled mirthlessly to think of it now—it had _seemed_ low, had been the lowest he had ever been, but compared to what he suffered now... well, it was experience that had taught Remus to expect that life would continuously decline.

For a time he had been able to guiltlessly indulge in self-pity, which was a sort of relief. He was hopelessly sad, but at least Remus could feel sorry for himself. Comparing himself to his friends became a ritual that leant him a sense of comfort. He wasn't perfect like James; he couldn't ride a broom to save his life, and he studied hard to maintain his excellent grades, unlike James who breezed through lessons with above average grades. Remus wasn't as carefree as Sirius and couldn't make a joke out of life; he envied Sirius for his ability to shrug everything off. Even Peter he found himself growing jealous of. After all, it was hard to have complex or deep emotions when you had such a simple mind. And all of those things were reason enough for Remus to be sad. It was Sirius who eventually ruined the ritual of self pity for the werewolf.

Although James and Sirius were acknowledged as the "best friends" at the center of their group, Remus and Sirius had grown quite close in their first few years at Hogwarts. One year, when they were thirteen, Sirius had really taken the time to explain his home life to Remus. Remus couldn't remember now how they'd got on the topic, but the whole ugly story unraveled. The constant in-fighting in Sirius's family had begun to evolve after he'd arrived at Hogwarts. His subsequent sorting into Gryffindor had enraged his mother, and Sirius had clung to his House as a symbol of defiance. Always rather rebellious, he'd positively papered his room in Gryffindor banners; that had lead to the first instance of abuse. Orion, Sirius explained, was a quiet man. Although he knew that his father disapproved of him, Sirius was not afraid of him because Orion's disapproval manifested, mostly, as snubbing and offhand insults. It was Walburga of whom he was terrified, and rightly so.

Once, James had told the group a story about a muggle man who was being sent to prison for beating his wife and daughter, nearly killing them. Remus and Peter had been shocked and there had been a long conversation following about the barbaric muggle tendency toward physicality. The conversation with Sirius was Remus's first exposure to the topic of physical abuse in the wizarding world—and it was much, _much_ worse. Walburga, Sirius explained, had a host of dark spells up her sleeve. He never said outright that she had used the Cruciatus Curse on him, but Remus would come to suspect in later years that that had been the case. She had even resorted to that "low" form of abuse—plain, muggle-like physical abuse. Walburga had pushed him down the stairs and broken his leg a couple weeks before their third year started. For two days, Sirius had sat in his room trying to keep the leg from setting crooked before she had appeared to heal it magically (and none too gently.)

After that, Remus couldn't feel sorry for himself anymore.

It was understood that Sirius's hardships were a secret between the two of them—the very passion that made he and James such good friends had Sirius convinced that his best mate would insist on doing something stupid were he to find out. Peter was good-natured and probably wouldn't argue if Sirius told him to keep a secret, but the two weren't close enough to warrant the sharing. So, whatever had lead to it, Sirius and Remus were now inexorably bound by the unmentionable fact. Remus thought, distantly, that maybe that was what had drawn them together. Because their conversations had been of a deeper nature than those any other pair in the group shared, they had formed a different sort of relationship. After all, when someone divulged their deepest secrets and emotions, you found that you had an intuitively meaningful connection with them.

Although Remus had been both flattered and touched by Sirius's admonition, he was bitter at the loss of his previously therapeutic episodes of self-pity. And, of course, he had no particular reason to be sad. Because of those things, he did not immediately attempt to explain his emotional turbulence to Sirius. Sirius, in fact, did not find out about the issue until almost a year after Remus had begun to hurt himself. It had started when they were fifteen, and all the Marauders had just become Animagi—Sirius did not find out until Remus was sixteen. The only thing Remus was glad of was that Sirius had only noticed some healing cuts, and had never seen open wounds on the werewolf's arms. And, perhaps, the fact that they had been alone when the marks were noticed.

It had gone over better than Remus had dared to hope. Part of it was that Sirius had an amazing gift for being unflappable—the other part was that they already had one Secret between them. It wasn't that hard to remind Sirius that the reason for his secrecy was identical to Remus's own: neither wanted their friends to attempt interference. Once Sirius saw the parallel he became quite subdued about it, although Remus suspected that the dog Animagi thought he was enabling. Remus did his best to assure Sirius that self harm was not something he ever _intended_ to do, and that he had no plans to continue, but that it sometimes could not be helped and he did not want to be hospitalized. He was not, he assured Sirius, in any danger. It was only a few full moons after the initial confession that Sirius caught on to his werewolf game.

What with his discovery of human cutting, Remus's episodes of lycanthropic self harm had become fewer and further between, because he didn't need to internalize his sadness until the full moon could bring him that post-pain calm. However, there was still the occasional overlap between low episodes and the appearance of the full moon. This time, when the Marauders entered the shack to find Remus unusually quiet and bleeding excessively, the look on Padfoot's face was stricken. Although he could not name the expression through the haze of depression and simplified wolf-thought, Remus knew exactly what it was when he became human again. Even on a dog's face, it was the look of someone putting two and two together. Sirius stuck close by Remus that night and the werewolf knew that his friend was taking careful stock of his behaviour, paying attention to his every move. Remus had to work double time to appear normal and by the end of the night he was mentally and physically exhausted. Sirius followed him to his bed and pulled the curtains closed aggressively. A quick silencing charm and Remus had still more explaining to do.

That had been rather easy to get out of, too, on the surface. Remus told Sirius that it was not his own fault—which was true, for the most part—and that it was a very rare occurrence—which was not. That lie had been a little brazen, perhaps, because even as he told it Remus could see Sirius thinking hard over the last several years, trying to remember every instance, and perhaps trying to pinpoint the first. Instead of commenting on the lie, however, Sirius shrugged and accepted it. There was a resolve in his eyes that told Remus to watch himself because he would be under a very careful eye from that point onward. And he had been. But it was alright because, watchful eye or otherwise, it was still one of their Secrets.

Remus rolled over in bed in the present day. He had long since ceased to bleed and the marks on his sheets were minimal. He would clean the blood up when he could find the motivation to reach for his wand and cast the spell. The werewolf breathed deeply through his nose and exhaled in a huff, turning his musings casually from remembering his history of self-inflicted injuries to the more sanguine topic of his relationship with Sirius. He was not capable of feeling anything stronger than a vague fondness in his current state of emotional ruin, but he knew that when he came back to himself there would be more depth to the sentiment. After all, he was aware that he loved the dog Animagus. How could he not, after everything they knew about one another? He also knew, after all this time, that it was no comfort to Sirius to hear that Remus loved him factually. Sirius wanted to be loved with all the depth with which he loved Remus... and sometimes that was possible. Other times—like now—it was not.

Remus could not remember the moment leading up to their first kiss. He knew that they had been having a conversation similar to many they had had in the past, sitting in bed with the curtains closed. He knew, too, that Sirius had been frustrated with him. He did not know what it had been about, or what had been said, or how it lead into kissing. Remus could remember with perfect clarity every line following, but he could not remember how they had come to that pivotal moment. He was called out of his memories rather abruptly by the fact that he was crying. Curling his arms into his chest—gently, so as not to aggravate any of the fresh scabs—he balled his fists in his eyes and tried to staunch the flow of tears. He did want Sirius, just now, but he had absolutely nothing of value to offer. He could hear, though his bed curtains were magically modified to prevent sound escaping, his friends coming up to bed. Remus had pleaded exhaustion a few hours earlier and gone to bed with the intent of harming himself. Now he listened as the Gryffindor boys went to bed with more innocent objectives—like sleeping, or masturbating.

The cuts on his arms caused Remus to plateau, and it was a cessation of feeling that he welcomed. He knew that he didn't like hurting himself. He didn't like being in pain—he did like the numbness. Remus began to contemplate, casually, as he had before, what the ultimate self harm would accomplish. After all, his fairly small actions of self-inflicted mutilation could keep his feelings at bay for a few hours, at most. What would the ultimate sacrifice achieve? He knew. The ultimate sacrifice would achieve the ultimate halt of feelings—it would achieve death. And, as he had thought often enough on other occasions, Remus thought again that death would be preferable. After all, he felt better now than he ever did in the thralls of depression and that was, ironically, entirely due to an absence of feeling. Absolute numbness could only be considered an improvement on this transient relief. Drawing a shuddering breath, Remus heard a light tapping at his headboard.

He knew without asking who it would be—the only one who requested entrance into Remus's bed at this time of night (it must be at least midnight) was Sirius Black... and Remus could think of no one he would like to see less. He dried his eyes and knew that he would be presentable, as he wasn't generally one whose feelings were writ plain on his face. Sirius was tapping gently again as Remus pulled his sleeves down and rumpled his blankets to hide the still uncleaned blood. He couldn't ignore the summons without drawing attention to himself, and so he hoped that Sirius only wanted a quick question answered and would leave without too much scrutiny. Remus waved his wand and whispered an invitation, but Sirius was already drawing the curtain back and sliding into the bed.

"Scoot over, Moony," he whispered with a grin, closing the curtain behind him and tucking his legs under the blankets that Remus had just so carefully arranged. "My feet are freezing."

Sirius seemed too bright for the small space, too colourful for the black hole that Remus's depression represented. He was blinding and overwhelming and Remus felt wasted by comparison, but he shoved over as requested and made room for Sirius in the darkness. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, Sirius often spent the night in Remus's bed rather than his own, and despite the fact that he did not at all feel like speaking, Remus was comforted by his friend's presence. His boyfriend. He didn't know. The friend-boyfriend-unknown wrapped his arms around Remus's waist and drew his face against Remus's chest. Remus sighed and hugged Sirius to him in return (tenderly, still cautious of his sensitive forearms.) They lay there like that for some time, Remus still casually mulling over the idea of ending his own life while feeling simultaneously guilty for having such dark thoughts next to the unmarred Sirius, when Sirius finally spoke.

"You're not here, Remus."

Remus, for his part, didn't know how to respond—because it was true. He was miles away, drowning in the Black Lake, jumping from the astronomy tower, lying on the tracks as the Hogwarts Express bore down on him. Anywhere but in his bed, with a half-asleep Sirius in his arms.

"Is it a bad night?"

Worried, for a moment, that his voice would break if he attempted to use it, Remus simply nodded and pressed his lips to Sirius's hair, in a casual gesture intended to convey that it was in no way Sirius's fault. Sirius lifted his head and placed a kiss on Remus's jaw by way of response and lapsed back into silence. Which, of course, did not last long.

"Can I see your arms?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Remus said, and then cleared his throat—his voice was, indeed, hoarse with crying and misuse.

"You know I don't blame you, and I don't judge you, and I'm hardly squeamish, so I don't see why not."

Remus couldn't see why not, either, and couldn't find it in himself to care very much at that particular moment. He drew away a little and—in the blackness—presented his right arm, still clad, to Sirius in a careless manner. The bed lit up unexpectedly and Remus could see Sirius's silver eyes by the wandlight, peering at his arm... which looked considerably worse than he'd imagined now that it was entirely visible. He closed his eyes and, from behind his eyelids, sensed the light extinguishing.

"Sorry," Sirius said. "That's new, Moons."

Remus nodded again.

"Can you tell me honestly what you were doing when I came up here?" It was a rule between them that they did not deny one another answers to straightforward questions. It was also implicitly understood that everything was a Secret unless explicitly stated. Sirius knew, though, that Remus did not like to spend a lot of time talking when he was experiencing heavy emotional exhaustion and so Remus felt justified in stipulating.

"When you came upstairs or when you tapped on the bed?" Remus was silently hoping that the other boy would choose the former, so that he could admit that he'd been wishing for Sirius.

Instead, Sirius promptly answered, "Tapping on the bed."

The werewolf took a silent breath. "I was thinking about suicide." He refrained from overtly asserting that he'd been considering it. It seemed an unnecessary and vulgar sort of thing to say. Sirius was quiet and hugged Remus closer again, kissing his face and then his lips gently. As their bodies drew flush, Remus noted that he was shorter than Sirius. He knew that he was smaller than the Animagi, but he resented the fact because it was trifling. The differences in their heights were so minor that Remus didn't quite understand James's constant jokes on the subject—the very jokes that made it so he couldn't even embrace Sirius in the very pits of depression without considering the matter of size. James was so pervasive.

"It would be a bad idea," Sirius said, and Remus had to get his bearings because he'd already forgotten what they'd been talking about. When he realized that they were now on the topic of his decision whether or not to take his own life, he did not respond—of course Sirius would see it as a bad thing. "Sadness is temporary."

Now Remus felt obliged to explain himself; the statement was so ridiculous. "This particular sadness is temporary, Sirius. Sadness is not. Overwhelming sadness, in fact, is an omnipresent and permanent part of my life. I will get out of this, if I don't die, but I will come back to another similar episode one day. Probably worse than this. And if that one does not kill me, there will be another after it." Remus knew that Sirius couldn't understand his outlook and that he was talking pessimistic drivel, but he also knew that he was not wrong. Sadness would follow him, possibly forever, though he would try and hope as long as he lived for a lasting happiness.

"Things get worse again, but there're happy moments in between," Sirius said thoughtfully, and Remus sensed a speech. The werewolf did not particularly want to be convinced to cling to his broken life, but he did want to listen to Sirius speak. "Are you willing to give up every single happy moment—and I will give you thousands, Remus, everything I have in my power to give—to avoid these painful ones? You didn't think you'd ever have me or that there would be anyone who loved you, and if you'd ended it all before we met... " Sirius paused to catch his breath. Remus knew, distantly, that Sirius had a kind of secondhand depression as a result of his interactions with the werewolf and that thought made him feel worse than anything else. He was often consumed by guilt over not just his own unhappiness, but Sirius's as well. This in spite of the fact that Sirius had told Remus that he would never stick around if he couldn't handle it. Voice still a little shaky, Sirius carried on vehemently. "It's not fair of you to quit now that you have me—and I have you. Giving up on your life is leaving me."

Remus felt tears running down his face, although none of the sadness that usually accompanied crying, of course—he could not feel sadness now—and was surprised that he _did_ feel another emotion. It was the tentative stirrings of his love for Sirius. He didn't like to embrace love while he was experiencing depression. He didn't want the feelings associated with one another, and didn't want to taint or sully his love with self-destructive sadness. Yet he could feel, for the first time, that maybe the depression was pulling back in the face of love. Sirius was kissing him again, with his hands on either side of Remus's face, brushing the tears away simultaneously in an aggravated gesture—as though he were annoyed that something as base as tears should denigrate Remus's cheeks. "Promise me," Remus could hear him saying, "Just promise me that you'll never take your own life." And Remus became dimly aware that he was muttering a repeated phrase in response: "I can't."

And it was true. Of course.

As usual, Remus John Lupin was completely out of his own control.

Sirius seemed to understand that Remus wasn't being difficult, or asking for further convincing. He was only scared. The Animagi responded with whispered nothings that Remus didn't even have to listen to to realize that they were comforting. When the tears stopped falling and Remus could breathe without the air catching in his throat, he kissed Sirius in earnest for the first time that night, grateful for his company and for his comfort. What he was trying to say with the kiss, although he never uttered a single word aloud, was that all he needed was Sirius's presence. He appreciated every word, but words weren't as important as simply having Sirius there. And as Sirius always seemed able to make him do, Remus found that he was tentatively hoping for his next happy moment.


End file.
